Archive for Tools

A friend and former co-worker of mine (Sean Deuby) has some excellent Active Directory Troubleshooting guides available online for free. These aren’t going to solve every problem for you but are great to ensure you have covered your basis when trying to troubleshoot Active Directory. Take a look at the link to see all the great help he has.

You know…is the Internet great? I mean really think about all the great things that are available at our finger tips, things like these great troubleshooting guides. The Internet hasn’t always been great but I’d say over the last 5 years it has really blossomed well. I know there is bad and harmful things out there but I really do believe that there is more good than bad…OK, time for me to stop thinking out loud again.

Some of you may have used Acctinfo.dll in to get the additional Account Info tab when managing Active Directory from 2003 or Windows XP. It was a great add on that should you additional info about Users such as their GUID and SID amongst many other things.

I’ve heard rumors that some people have seen Acctinfo2.dll out in the wild…aka the Internet and that it works on Server 2008 R2. Please don’t download anything called Acctinfo2.dll from the Internet unless it is officially from Microsoft. I’m not saying that Acctinfo2.dll doesn’t exist…to be honest I have no idea because I’ve never tried to install it. But like you I’m not a fan on downloading something that could potentially do harm to my environment.

For those looking to get those “Additional Account” attributes you can still do it. The first way is to just use the Attributes tab in Active Directory Users and Computers, but there is a an even better way. All you really need to do is use the Active Directory Administration Center. Let me show you.

Once you open the Active Directory Administration Center up you can do a search for the user you want additional info on:

Now either double-click on that account or click the Properties from the Tasks on the right side.

These are the standard account properties…but…did you notice the area called Modified on the bottom? That is where the magic really happens.

Here you can see all sorts of goodies including an account’s SID. Just take a look at all that goodness.

Good stuff indeed. Now stop trying to download something that doesn’t exist except in Area 51.

I’m sure you are like me when it comes to locking your desktop. You ALWAYS do it. Most if not all corporations today have a group policy in place that at least sets the Screen Saver on after a certain amount of time and requires a password for security reasons (User Configuration – Administrative Templates – Control Panel – Personalization – Password protect the screen saver).

You know as well as I do that there is always that one person that seems to always forget to lock their workstation. Sure the group policy will kick in…eventually. During that time the system is unlocked and the data vulnerable.

Since i’m such a huge fan of shortcuts I have two for the price of one today. I will show you two methods to lock your workstation…even for those very forgetful people.

Method 1 (and what I think is the easiest)

By pressing the Windows key and L on the keyboard you effectively lock the system. I use this one ALL the time. It is the quickest method that I know. However some people are not so keyboard shortcut friendly.

Method 2

For the people that prefer to use their mouse here are several steps to create a desktop shortcut. This method is very similar to the post I had on creating a shortcut for the Network Properties in Server 2008.

1. From where ever you want the shortcut create, Right click and select New –> Shortcut (I recommend the Desktop)

2. Put the following path into location rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation

3. Click Next and type whatever you would like the name of the Shortcut Icon to appear as and click Finish.

4. Time to change the way the Icon looks – Right Click on the newly created Shortcut and select Properties

5. Click the Change Icon… button and change the path to %SystemRoot%system32SHELL32.dll and now pick whichever Icon you prefer.

6. We finally have an icon available to lock the workstation on the Desktop.

I personally love when people at work leave their workstations unlocked. Like a lot of you i’m sure you like to teach that person a lesson. Perhaps mess with the background…a nice screensaver message on how much they look up to me!

It seems I”m always trying to remember this little command and its about time I put here where I can always access it in the future. This isn’t a new command but it is a nifty little one that will initiate replication across your environment.

Repadmin /syncall /APed

I prefer to run it from the DC (thus the reason DC_name is taken out after /syncall) and from the command line to pipe it out to a text file.

I’ve just finished writing an article up on admin tools that I use over on AdminPrep. If you have some tools that you would like to recommend please leave a comment here for others to see what helps get your through your day…tool wise that is!!!

That has to be the longest title I’ve ever had in any blog. In my opinion this has the ability to the best post I’ve ever created too. The reason being that I’m always looking for ways to make my life easier…and then share them with you. EVERY single person I’ve spoken to about Windows Server 2008 has been frustrated with the amount of clicks and initial confusion on how to get to the Network Card properties. Hopefully this will help.

The plan is the create a custom shortcut and copy it to the desktop for easy access (isn’t it always about easy access?).

1. From where ever you want the shortcut create, Right click and select New –> Shortcut (I recommend the Desktop)

2. Put the following path into location C:windowsSystem32ncpa.cpl

3. Click Next and type what ever you would like the name of the Shortcut Icon to appear as.

4. Time to change the way the Icon looks – Right Click on the newly created Shortcut and select Properties

5. Click the Change Icon… button and pick whichever Icon you prefer.

6. We finally have an icon available to view the Network Interfaces on our Windows Server 2008 and Vista machines

NOTE:

Unlike Windows 2000 and 2003 where you had to right-click and select Properties here you will have to double click the icon…which I think is just a bit easier.

I’m always of fan of shortcuts and the Windows Server 2008 Administrator”s Companion from Microsoft Press has a complete list of the command line shortcuts for starting Administrative Consoles for Server 2008. There are plenty of other goodies in this book so make sure you take a look at getting this one.

While I’ve always been a fan of Task Manager but lets face the facts…its has its limitations. Mark Russinovich has rolled up his wonderful Sysinternal Troubleshooting Utilities into a single download that can be found here.

In there you will find the ultra popular Process Explorer. Well I wanted to test out some stuff on Server Core…like what type of tools will really work on it. I copied over Process Explorer and it ran like a champ! Now all I need to do is go into the Options menu and select Replace Task Manager and now when I enter taskmgr or hit CTRL-Shift-ESC Process Explorer opens instead of Task Manager.

Some of you may have noticed there were some missing tabs in Active Directory Users and Computers after you installed RSAT on Windows Vista. Specifically the Terminal Services Profile, Remote Control, Environment, and Sessions tabs are not there. The reason behind this is because Windows Vista is missing the TSUSEREX.DLL…basically it can”t be a Terminal Server.

Ned from the Directory Services team has posted an unsupported fix for this on the Directory Services blog. I snagged the fix here for you to see.

You can use your Windows Server 2008 AD Users and Computers snap-in by terminal serving into the remote administration sessions.

You can make your RSAT DSA.MSC work the way you’d expect by taking the following unsupported steps:

A. Locate a Win2008 Server which has DSA.MSC installed via Server Manager features/roles. The installed OS platform architecture must match your client (so use 32-bit OS server if using 32-bit OS client, and the same for 64-bit).